


Basket of Kittens

by mjules



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluffy Angst, Kittens, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-29
Updated: 2011-10-29
Packaged: 2017-10-25 01:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/pseuds/mjules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a basket of kittens on the library floor, on the corner of the rug by the window, where the sunlight has lulled them all to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Basket of Kittens

There is a basket of kittens on the library floor, on the corner of the rug by the window, where the sunlight has lulled them all to sleep, gray-striped head on an orange one, solid black head on fluffy white. Anders stops at the top of the stairs, Tevinter tome in one hand, manifesto page in the other, and blinks. The electric blue rumble of Justice slides to the back of his mind, quieted, stunned into silence by this break in routine.

 

One of the kittens – the orange one, the one that Anders already knows has stolen his heart, an unfair advantage because of its resemblance to Ser Pounce – yawns, long pink tongue curling out with a tiny squeak of sound. Its siblings stir against it, shifting against the wicker weave.

 

Anders feels his fingers curl into the book, crinkling the paper; he can already feel their soft fur, their squirming bodies pressed close against his robes, tiny noses nuzzling cold into his throat. But the span of the floor between where he stands and where the basket rests in a perfect patch of sunlight feels too far – it is the space between where he is and where he thought he’d be at this age, the space between all the ways reality has surprised his fears, disappointed his hopes.

 

“I kind of expected a bit more reaction than that,” Garrett says from behind him, and Anders half-turns, knuckles pale with his unrelenting grip on the objects in his hands.

 

“Where –”

 

Garrett shrugs, and the red streak across the bridge of his nose – _A talisman_ , he’d said once, _a good luck charm_ ; a joke he’d started with Carver long ago, before the flight from Lothering, before the ogre – cannot hide the pink flush beneath it.

 

“Merrill mentioned there were kittens in the Lowtown market. I went to see if one of them was a tabby, but…” He shifts his weight, the only indication Anders has that this is hard for him, embarrassing but also poignant in a way Anders doesn’t understand yet. “But I couldn’t separate them.”

 

 _Of course._ Family is one of those things, and even though the kittens are too young to remember or miss their littermates once they grow up, Garrett is old enough to remember every loss, every crack, a family of four dwindling to one – the one who stands behind Anders on the stairs of the library, scratching the back of his neck self-consciously, looking so out of place in the ancestral home he’d reclaimed for his mother.

 

“I’m glad,” Anders says, turning enough to press a kiss to Garrett’s cheek, as soft as the noses he’d imagined at his own throat.

 

Garrett slips his hands around Anders’s hips, shifts them so that the book and the paper are awkward to hold, then spares a hand to take his burdens from him. It makes him smile, this moment of acceptance, of help. A small thing, but worth a lifetime to someone who’s had to look out for himself for longer than he can reliably remember. It’s more than just this one moment; it’s a million of them, just like this one, smaller and bigger. A hand on his thigh when he wakes in the night, a look and a smile across the corner of the Hightown market, the sound of his name ringing out and a rogue’s shadow falling over him when he stumbles in battle.

 

These moments have their meaning to Garrett as well. Anders knows that the fingermarks on his hip are as much from desperation as passion, the look across the market is to assure his lover he’s still there, and no one will be taking him from this world without going through Garrett first – but the differences do not lessen their importance.

 

Hands free now, he slides them up Garrett’s arms to his shoulders, toying with the edge of his fine, embroidered collar. Their smiles curve at similar angles and press together, then disappear in a flurry of moans and the sudden hitch of breath as their arms tighten, both of them clinging, both afraid to let go.

 

“ _That’s_ more the reaction I was expecting,” Garrett says hoarsely when they part, and Anders’s laugh bursts out of him with the last of his breath that Garrett didn’t steal. And that too is a gift, maybe the best one.

 

 _Well,_ he corrects himself as a soft mew from behind him catches his attention and pulls him across the room with his lover trailing him to the basket where they gather up the kittens, two for each, sitting close to each other and watching tiny eyes squint, tiny paws grasp for purchase. _Maybe the second best._


End file.
